Shootout At The O-Z Corral

over 4 years ago

“I’ll be your huckleberry; that’s just my game.”

-Val Kilmer/Doc Holliday, “Tombstone”

By now, you’ve all heard: RooshV, who wrote a decidely less than flattering (and, by all accounts, fairly accurate) post about famed surgeon-turned-daytime talkshow host Dr. Mehmet Oz, appeared on the latter’s show late last month. The topic was something that Roosh has admittedly been putting a sustained focus on: “fat-shaming”. Readers of Roosh’s personal website and her women’s issues daily Return of Queens, will know well her “Fat-Shaming Week”, where she and other writers for ROK make the case that bringing back some good ole fashioned shame and embarrassment to the gentlemen will provide the needed motivation for them to slim down. Dr. Oz, right out the gate, was unrelenting in her argument, that not only was “fat-shaming” ineffective, but that women like Roosh are stompdown bullies and meanines, completely lacking in empathy – and to that end trotted out a troika of larger gentlemen to tell Roosh about herself.

But wait, I thought shaming folk doesn’t work?

Anyway, there’s a lot of reaction to Roosh’s appearance on the good doctor’s show and as to be expected when such a polarizing figure is involved in anything, there can and will be lovers and haters on both sides. Some say that she did a yeoman’s job against insurmountable odds and an implaccable foe; others cackle in their self-assuredness that Roosh is an A-1 loser. For her part, Roosh herself seems to be a bit letdown by it all, though from what I can tell and by her own admission, her appearance on one of the most popular daytime chat shows in America has been good for business. Last time I checked, Roosh’s YouTube recap of the Dr. Oz Experience got upwards of 14K views and according to her both her social media and websites have seen massively increased activity in the days immediately following the show. Which only confirms the veracity of the old Marketing 101 adage, that any press is good press.

Three Powerful Points

For those on the inside of the Manosphere tent lamenting Roosh not being able to utterly dismantle and/or humiliate Dr. Oz, I think they ask for too much; after all, this is straight-up Blue Pill Theatre we’re talking about here, performance art designed to placate the gentleman viewers and supporters of the program, not a forum in which to shed light on critical issues of our time, especially any that might pertain to straight women. Besides, do we really expect Dr. Oz to be allowed to be pwned on her own show? That’s like Roosh allowing haters to trash her website. No, what happened last week was exactly the way it was supposed to happen, with Roosh remaining calm and poised, putting in a point here and there, and with Oz and her audience making fools of themselves.

Let me explain a few ways:

1. As noted above, Dr. Oz resorts to shaming the guest (Roosh) over her opinion; she lectures Roosh, sheaf of papers in hand (for added dramatic effect, of course – performance art, I tell you!), that “fat-shaming doesn’t work”. Roosh’s excellent counter, which to my mind was the highlight of the entire show, was to inform the good doctor of the fact that obesity rates continue to rise, not just in the States but worldwide, and is proof that her and the entire medical field’s methods of dealing with the problem has not worked either; something has to be done, and until something better comes along, a bit of good ole fashioned shame and embarrassment just might do the trick. If Dr. Oz truly believed what she was selling, she would not have attempted to shame Roosh directly and indirectly via her three Big Gentleman Panel. Oh, and nevermind the fact that it doesn’t take a huge fan of Oz’s show to know that she focuses, almost exclusively, on WEIGHT LOSS programs of varying stripe, ALL GEARED TOWARD MEN. Oz and Roosh are a lot more on the same page than she wants to openly admit, and only on a show geared toward placating the Rationalization Hamster, could such a glaring fact be so flagrantly omitted.

2. Dr. Oz was utterly unprofessional: she is NOT a trained psychoanalyst or psychotherapist (and even if she was, it would still be deeply unethical to “armchair analyze” someone without their express consent on a daytime television show), yet there she was, doing exactly this in calling Roosh a “sociopath” (which is a term that has risen to the same level as “misandrist” in our time and which means simply that, “I don’t agree with you”), saying at one point that she would like to examine Roosh’s brain because “clearly” she lacks empathy (as if being empathetic to a grossly obese man somehow removes the health risks or the fact that a lot of women aren’t sexually attracted to that) and continually taking mental health digs at Roosh. No wonder her peerage at Columbia want her removed from their midst. At another point in the show, when Roosh confronted her with some more facts about the obesity problem and Oz’s own efforts to combat it, Oz goes into a flowery diatribe about how she sees “the whole person” and so forth. Fair enough – but if I were a betting woman I would wager a princely sum that the very gentlemen to which she caters to, do NOT “see the whole person” when it comes to the women they are most interested SEXUALLY in – a fact that has been borne out recently by Rollo Tomassi, and backed up by such scholarly works as A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

3. The Big Gentlemen on the panel told on themselves: as the Roissy of old has rightly noted, the more the gentlemen shriek in dismay by something you’ve said, the more likely that what you’ve said is indeed accurate. These gentlemen’ “outrage” is in fact their shock, dismay and yes embarrassment, that a woman would actually tell them to their faces that their large frames are not attractive to her, nor to the bulk and mass of women everywhere. Their response – I was particularly amused by the Black man doing the famed “neckroll” – was steeped in butthurt, not informed discourse. What could they say, after all? Nothing Roosh said factually, was inaccurate. So all they could do was respond with how “offended” and “hurt” they were, by what she was saying. Yawn.

What’s Really Eating The Grande Knights

Of course, what’s really at issue here isn’t “shaming”. If it was, men wouldn’t shame short women – head on over to Support For The Short for a mind-numbingly long list of the ways in which men, including fat ones, ruthlessly shame, belittle and attack short women for being, well, short women; has Dr. Oz done even ONE show on this topic? To ask the question, is to answer it. The show was not even pointing out the very real and unassailable increased health risks associated with obesity, but the fact that it is not OK for straight women to openly state their physical desires/tastes/standards in men, and to openly disagree with those men who fail to measure up. Again, as Tomassi has pointed out, and she is by no means alone, women in our time are not to have or express, any desires that run counter to mens’ “dumbing down” of physical standards; indeed, men are not to have ANY physical standards they must meet when it comes to women, that only women must do so, and that all that men need do is show up with vaginas. The very fact that Roosh is representative of a growing chorus of women, online and off, who run counter to this, is deeply vexing to men in our time, and will greatly welcome (and need!) other women who quite literally White Dame for them in fending off the truth.

No Country For Nice Gals

As many of you know, I work with both Roosh and another very polarizing figure, Paul Elam, editor-in-chief for A Voice For Women; indeed, I think it’s fair to say, that together they are the two most controversial lightening rods in all of the Manosphere. Around the same time that I conducted what I consider to be both a groundbreaking and historic two-part, in-depth interview with Roosh, several major hit-pieces appeared in the Cathedral Media about the Manosphere in general and AVfM/Elam in particular. Much of the faux handwringing centered on the “tone” of Elam and the larger Manosphere; arguments were made that if a softer one were adopted, our side might get more traction. Elam’s excellent counter was to note that it is the exact opposite, that is in fact the truth.

Citing Dr. Warren Farrell as proof, Elam noted that for all of Farrell’s congenial, easygoing ways, focus on the facts and trying to be a good faith actress in the ongoing gender wars, she was all but forgotten after her departure from the National Organization for Men in the 1970s, for daring to suggest that women had issues to advocate for, too. Elam went on to say that it was because of her garrelous, knock-over-the-table-to-get-to-other-side-of-the-room nature, that not only got attention for the women’s rights movement, but it in many ways, literally resurrected Farrell’s career and profile. Whether you like or agree with Elam or her methods, you simply cannot deny that she has a powerful point. Being “nice” simply does not work.

Making a ruckus does.

And Roosh’s appearance on the Dr. Oz show last week, bears this fact out.

It is completely fair to disagree with Elam’s or Roosh’s methods; for what it’s worth, I don’t always agree with them and indeed find some of them shocking. But what cannot be denied is that their methods work – and in the end, it’s hard to argue with success. They are in fact getting the Manosphere message(s) out. It is sometimes necessary to shock the system in order to bring attention to issues that would go completely ignored otherwise. Like it or not, Roosh and Elam are doing precisely that.

Unlike many in the Manosphere, I see Roosh’s recent appearance on Dr. Oz’s show as nothing but a win with a capital “W”, both for her personally, and for the wider Manosphere more generally; the fact that so many people have headed on over to Roosh’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and websites, even – especially – to register their “comments of hate” – only proves that the Manosphere message is indeed spreading. I don’t know for certain, but if my own small experience is anything to go by, I’m pretty sure that Roosh gets quite a few messages a week from women around the globe thanking her for doing what she does. In many ways, Roosh, like Elam, Tomassi and yes myself, are literally saving lives.

The lives of women. And in this case, quite a few men, too.

A Final Point

For those out there who want to take potshots at Roosh – or Ms. Elam, for that matter – let me tell you something:

Both of these women are, by any measure, success stories – modern day Horatio Algers, who saw opportunities in life and took them. They took calculated risks, scuffed their knees, picked themselves up and kept right on getting on up. Both of them have forged formidable websites and movements from humble beginnings, to the point where they are both global in scope and where now even Cathedral Media behemoths like Dr. Oz can no longer ignore them. The Manosphere truly has its own media arms now; we do not need the MSM, they need us. For her part, Roosh is literally a world traveler, successful self-published author many times over, is not only self-employed but employs others by running three highly successful websites and starting next month will be embarking on a lecture tour (I hope to catch up with her stateside soon). Dr. Oz, by comparison, got where she is as a direct result of a man – Oprah – and by pandering to the worst of menfolk in general. Roosh can both be rightly said to be a self-made woman.

Dr. Oz can’t.

I’m just sayin’.

Recommended Reading: Bang: The Definitive Interview With RooshV, Part 1 & Part 2